The invention relates in general to systems and methods for exchanging sales leads. In particular, the invention relates to computer-implemented systems and techniques that allow a seller to improve revenue generation from the sale of complementary products/services sales leads while providing temporally-relevant information to customers to enable customers to obtain high quality complementary products/services.
Marketing and advertising costs often represent a large percentage of operating costs for companies engaged in the sales of products and/or services (products/services). Corporate marketing strategists expend significant resources to determine how best to optimize marketing and advertising campaigns to target potential customers at the lowest cost. The potential customer information is often referred to sales leads and can include one or more sub-categories, for example, suspects which are defined generally as possible customers, and prospects which are defined generally as suspects who have indicated a heightened willingness to purchase the products/services.
One technique that marketing strategists employ is to develop an ideal customer profile and audience, and suitable means for communicating with the ideal audience, such as direct mail, telephone solicitations, advertising in trade publications, trade shows, or seminars. This is generally a costly exercise for most companies, especially in mature competitive markets. Companies typically monitor their cost per lead or cost per prospect as a key performance indicator (KPI) for their marketing campaign. As a practical matter, marketing is only effective when certain conditions are met, e.g., a prospect must have the ability, willingness, and readiness to buy before a direct sale can be consummated.
It turns out that many customers who are interested in specific product/services may also be interested in complementary products/services (i.e., additional products/services related to the products/services already purchased). A conventional example of cross-selling to such customer leads include the familiar United States Post Office's Mover Package, which contains advertisements targeting customers who are relocating. The underlying common event is the relocation. The mover package contains advertisement flyers from cable companies, satellite TV companies, DSL providers, satellite radio, cell phone companies, rental companies, storage companies, moving companies, real estate, mortgage brokers and so forth. These are complementary products/services to the service already utilized, i.e., the Post Office's Mover Package.
Other conventional examples of cross-selling include, for example, up-selling complementary products at the point of sale based on the current purchase or purchasing history of the customer. These companies include, for example, online bookstores or grocery store check-out counters and they tend to promote products/services of the same company. Companies have also extracted past leads from a company's existing customer database and then sells those leads to other companies. Other paradigms such as mining data from the Internet to develop a predictive model for targeting potential customer leads also exist. These sales leads can then be sold to other companies to realize revenue for the company selling the leads.
However, there are disadvantages to all the above-mentioned approaches. From the perspective of the company buying the leads, for example, there is insufficient control over how sales leads are selected and/or little assurance of the quality of the leads and/or whether they wish to pay for particular leads, and how much for the leads. In the Post Office example, all complementary products/services companies bear the cost of printing and distributing the advertisements although some movers/customers clearly cannot take advantage of certain products/services advertised (e.g., a mover moving out of the country would not be interested in the purchase of a new cable-vision package). Thus, from the perspective of the complementary products/services sellers who could not take advantage of certain movers leads, the printing/distributing/advertising costs attributed to such movers/customers are essentially wasted.
From the perspective of the company that already consummated the transaction, revenue is not maximized from the information available through the consummated transaction. As mentioned earlier, certain leads are more likely to produce a sale than others. However, there exist no mechanisms for efficiently allowing a company to qualify a hot prospect from a lukewarm prospect on behalf of a particular complementary products/services provider and to obtain more revenue from a hot prospect versus a lukewarm prospect.
Further, there is a risk associated with referral. A good customer who suffered through a bad experience with a complementary products/services provider may associate the experience with the referring company, and may resent the fact that she has suffered because of “bad information” provided by the referring company. Yet current lead referral or lead utilization paradigms do not furnish sufficient information to the referring company to enable to the referring company to make a decision regarding whether to refer a customer to a particular company that offers a complementary product/service.
The invention disclosed herein aims at solving these and other problems associated with prior art techniques of exchanging sales leads.